Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner Page B

a carrot and bit it in half.
     
“Then do you remember the kid with the bottle?”
     
“The what?”
     
“The kid with the fucking milk bottle tied around his neck.”
     
Paul stopped chewing and shifted a load of half-masticated carrot from one side of his mouth to the other. “What the hell are you talking about?”
     
“You don’t remember.”
     
“Enlighten me.”
     
Francis glanced around the restaurant, finding himself making wider arcs than usual to see if anyone was listening. “You remember she worked at Bellevue, right?” He dropped his voice.
     
“Yes. She was in the pediatric ER.”
     
“Right. Exactly. So just before Christmas break the year before she dies, third-grade teacher from one of the fancy-ass uptown private schools walks into the ER with an eight-year-old boy. Dad’s a big lawyer at a white-shoe firm. But the teacher knows something’s up, because he’s got bruises on both arms and severe stomach pains every day. Allison starts to examine him and sees he’s got this big lump under his shirt. And when she lifts it, it turns out to be a baby bottle tied around his neck.”
     
“I’m still not remembering,” Paul sucked his molars.
     
“So Allison does her thing, just the way we would,” Francis said. “She goes eye-to-eye with the kid. She works him, she talks to him. She plays Monopoly with him. She gets him to trust her. And then it all comes out that his father, Mr. Big Shit Corporate Hot Dog, says the kid’s been acting like a baby. Crying and wetting the bed. So if he’s going to act like a baby, he’s going to wear a baby bottle to school. A third-grader, Paulie. Isn’t that nice?”
     
He stirred his coffee again, not wanting to risk asking for milk when it could be right next to him.
     
“All the nurses were right outside the room when she was trying to get him to take the bottle off. The poor kid’s in hysterics, begging her, ‘ Please, please, nonononono, Daddy will be so mad. Please don’t make me take it off. ’ Broke their hearts. And these are tough fucking women. They’ve seen everything. They make you look like a goddamn choirgirl.”
     
“Francis, come on . . .”
     
“So Allison called the father up and reamed him out. This nice girl, whose mother wrote children’s books. ‘ You fuck-ING asshole, I am going to call Social Services, I’m going to call Bureau of Child Welfare on you. . . . ’ With the Jamaican nurses in the background going, ‘You tell him, girl.’”
     
“She get him locked up?”
     
“He ended up with a desk appearance ticket.” Francis stirred his coffee. “ Fucker. And, yeah, I looked at him for the murder at the time. But that scumbag was in Gstaad with his girlfriend.”
     
“Many moons ago, Francis. Seems like the Dark Ages. Everything’s different now.”
     
“She was one of us. ” Francis stared at him, nothing wrong with his central vision yet. “She was good people.”
     
“Hey, Francis. Don’t make me the bad guy here. It’s a complicated issue. The guy went in when he was seventeen and came out thirty-seven. A lot of people are going to say we already got our pound of flesh.”
     
“And Allison would be forty-six. . . .”
     
“All right, all right.” Paul put his carrot down. “No one’s saying we’re throwing in the towel either. This was a heinous crime. No question about it. People remember. It’s not in our interest to let murderers go free before they’ve served their full sentence.”
     
“Particularly if we’re up for a judgeship.”
     
“That’s a cheap shot, Francis.” The bristly little troops arose on Paul’s scalp. “And you know it.”
     
“So obviously it’s true.”
     
Of course, Francis had already heard the rumors. After this many years, men like Paul didn’t sit around waiting for the DA to retire or die. They took their restless vaulting ambition and they went politicking. It was natural for Paul to want to be a judge. He didn’t have the temperament or the social skills for the private sector—no wife to set off his intensity and give